Tag Archives: Budweiser

“Wait, without Budweiser, that means I’ll have to drink a better beer, which is literally any other beer.”

~America in 1976

Even when we’re screeching harpies hating on everything you love (which, apparently, solely consists of fucking ALDI, you goddamn lunatics of the internet) we are at least aware of the hatred we’re spewing. For example—many Americans like Budweiser. Like, they buy it, and drink it, and describe the flavor as something better than “remember that kid who would always sit alone and chew grass during recess? We’re pretty sure he’s now the brewmaster for Anheuser-Busch” and that’s fine. Let your freak flag fly, enjoy getting full before getting drunk and, we don’t know, unironically wearing trucker hats, it’s your life and do what makes you happy. We’re putting that out there because, invariably, every time we talk about Budweiser (which fucking sucks) an army of mouth breathers flock to the comments section to respond to our (correct) point (that Budweiser is trash). They say things like “Hey! Asshole! I like Budweiser!” (literally the only valid argument you have) or “Listen Mr. Fancy Beers, go back to your IPAs and your porters or whatever” (which inevitably is brought up in the articles where we never once mention IPAs or porters).

So, we know two things here. First of all, we know that we have a fun fact that most of you are unaware of. And secondly, we know that many of you will be absolutely fucking livid at the tone we take to tell you about it (that tone being “Budweiser is like if someone drank gutter water and thought ‘if only this could get me a slight buzz’”) (which is the correct tone). And we say bring it on. Budweiser is trash, no one should drink it, and for a brief moment in 1976, a group of Teamsters actually managed to make that happen. This is their story.

Yesterday, Budweiser sent newsfeeds everywhere a-buzzing with the craaazy news that starting on May 23rd, all cans of Budweiser sold in the United States will instead say “America” in their iconic font. Basically, you can “order an American” at the bar if you really want to see how many times your bartender can hear a person chortle at the same poorly formed semi-dad joke before they finally snap and burn the place to the fucking ground. This is a bit of an extension of previous years when Budweiser changed their packaging in the summer to more patriotic can designs, but it’s the first time they’ve actually removed their brand name to place the name of this great nation on it. You would think we would be enthused by such raw support of all things American.

You would be wrong.

To address this, we will cede the floor to Johnny Roosevelt, the Editor-in-Chief of America Fun Fact of the Day, who last took the time to personally address you all last summer when he spent 2,500 words personally insulting a rich egomaniac with a history of assault and an extensive gun collection. Surprisingly he’s still alive to let you know why Budweiser is wrong and bad for trying to get you to call it America. Take it away, chief.

Johnny Roosevelt Speaks: Do Not Call Budweiser “America” No Matter What The Can Tells You

Back in 2012, we wrote an article listing the 10 top selling beers in America. We made the point that these beers, which include Natural Light, Busch, and a red cup of stale keg beer from last night’s party that inexplicably has a Band-Aid in it Bud Light are, in the general sense of the term, ass-numbingly awful. Some of you read this and said, “Yes, these are bad beers” because you like to use the internet as a safe space for correct and well-reasoned mindsets. Some of you read it and said, “Fuck you and your IPAs, GIMME AN ICE COLD BUD” which was both disappointing because someone singed off your taste buds as a child, and surprising because we never once talked about IPAs in the entire article.

In the four years since the publication of our scathing exposé, a lot has changed in America. We have a black president now (*terrified intern scrambles and whispers in our ear*) okay we apparently had a black president in 2012 too, but either way more Americans are making a point to drink good beers, and are starting to steer away from the beer companies that see their sales numbers plummeting and have to resort to commercials saying, “DRINK OUR BEER, YA PUSSIES.”

So naturally, when 247wallst.com came out with an article titled “10 Beers Americans no longer Drink” we were enthralled to see that the beers on this list, which documents the beers with the largest sales drop from 2009-2014, are beers that America should actively be drinking less of. It’s articles like this that make us feel like we’re finally being heard as Americans who want other Americans to stop drinking shitty swill, or at least to get get drunk enough that it doesn’t matter what they’re drinking before switching to it. And because the major sites that picked up the story weirdly decided to copy/paste only a handful of list items as a weird way to combine stealing someone else’s work while not going through the effort to give you a complete list, we’re going to post the full top 10 list list, only instead of looking into “market trends” or whatever, we’ll just focus on how these beers are bad, and how it’s a good thing that you’re no longer drinking them.

“Forsake your God, because all that lies herein is death and fire and petulance, and none can save you, none shall live.”

~Official Budweiser Press Release

Listen, America, this shit is important. You need to start ignoring Budweiser. We’re already on the way to phasing out Budweiser, with 44% of drinkers aged 21 to 27 having never had a Bud in their wonderfully enriched lives, but we’re getting to the point where Budweiser is going to do its best to get your attention, and you mustn’t let it. Much like a misbehaving child or, more accurately, an emotionally unstable ex who keeps sending you messages no matter what you do, Budweiser is going to get more and more loud with their terrible, awful beerness before they start to fade away. It’s going to take a long time, but we have to do whatever we can to ignore Budweiser’s “U Out? I’m not wareing undrware ;P” texts while we can, because the company has clearly gone insane and there’s no sign of them letting up for now, and our only course of action is to close our eyes and hope they go away.

In 2011, Anheuser-Busch purchased Goose Island in their attempt to corner a market that saw more and more Americans shunning Budweiser for beer that, you know, tastes good. The following year, they brought forth Bud Light Platinum, which you might know as “why does my beer taste like someone drizzled like, three sips worth of vodka in here?” 2012 also saw the creation of the Lime-a-Rita, which is a great way for people who don’t like alcohol to remind themselves that they really need to sit down and reevaluate their lives.

“I like it because it’s fruity, but it still can get you drunk, and oh God how did I end up passed out in a Walmart?”

Lately, Budweiser has been playing the role of the petulant child, spending millions of dollars to shout at Americans for “tasting” their beer instead of “drinking it” during the Super Bowl which, frankly, sounds like the kind of thing you’d hear Joe Rogan say as encouragement to a contestant of Fear Factor during the gross-out food part of the show. “Don’t taste it! Just eat it! If you manage not to puke you go on to the next round!”

Which brings us to the latest shout of “Mommy mommy look what I can do” that is set to be released on February 16th (oh darn, it’ll just miss Valentine’s Day, huh?) and also our latest totally-not-monthly installment of…

“Oh, that seems a fair price for such a delicious…*chugs entire bottle* *runs the fuck out*”

~AFFotD staffer when presented with one of America’s most expensive beers

The 21st century is a great time to like beer. While America spent the 1970s thinking that managing to score a case of Coors was something to actually be excited about, and we had to blindly choose between “Bud” or “Miller” at most bars before deciding, “Fuck that, I’ll just chug some Listerine instead, it’ll get more drunk and tastes a little better” we now live in a nation where there are enough distinct and delicious varieties of beer that even people who swear they “hate beer” can find a style they love.

Now, much like there are still people who believe that the Earth if flat, or that Little Fockers is the best movie Ben Stiller has ever made, some drinkers hopelessly cling to Budweiser and Miller as “what a real beer tastes like!” If you dare to point out that Budweiser tastes like someone put a handful of straw in a wet sock that they poured a bottle of tonic water in, they’ll ball up their fists and shout, “I like this beer ‘cause it’s cheap! It’s refreshing when you make it cold enough that you can’t taste it that well! Something negative about IPAs!”

While we might be being harsh in saying that these people are troglodytes, we do know that they just Googled the word “troglodyte” and said, “Hey, fuck you too assholes!” to their screen as if we can hear them (we cannot).

We love it when beer commercials make our point for us.

However, the main point that people who defend inferior beer (“mer mer that’s elitist I like my beer cold and my mer mer mer”) make is that Budweiser, Miller, and Coors are all, well, very cheap. Granted, there are cheaper beers out there that taste better, but that’s not saying much—you can have a very basic, cheap lager that will do the job to get you drunk, and people can rightfully point out that a twelve pack of cheap shitty beer costs about the same as a six pack of okay craft beer. We don’t dispute this, but we should point out that the shitty beer tends to be about 4% alcohol per volume, while you can get that okay craft beer at around 8% or 9%, meaning you’ll get drunker faster on better beer, so why the hell are you so desperately clinging to your macrobrew?

That being said, the boon of microbrewing and homebrewing in America means that now, more than ever before, we’ve had an almost infinite options of great beer at our disposal. Unfortunately, with that boon in popularity comes gimmicks, and one of those gimmicks involves limited release beers that cost you more than you can really justify spending on a beer. These are beers that cost $50 or more, and even at that price, require you wait in line and fight off hundreds of other craft beer nerds, desperate to taste a forbidden fruit that really probably tastes about as good as a $10 beer of comparable quality.

So we’re going to throw a bone to those of you reading this shouting (again, we can’t hear you) “Fancy beers are for sissies! They cost too much! I like Coors Light and being punched in the dick, you know, manly drinks!” by addressing the one negative side effect of the craft beer boon. Obnoxiously expensive beers. And so, we present to you…

“Mer mer mer I like Budweiser you’re just a hater a nice cold Bud mer mer nothing beats it I don’t like IPAs because mer mer mer I own an above ground pool and I spent more money on my lawn mower than my car shut up COORS RULESSSSS.”

~Angry commentators at the bottom of this page

As 2015 looms over us sinisterly, waiting for the right time to murder 2014 forever, our news feeds and Google streams become flooded with year-end lists. The year’s best movie, best album, best TV show, best whatever, we have hundreds of opinion-stated-as-fact year-end lists published each year, and while we don’t tend to indulge in that kind of nostalgia here in the affotd offices, we are at least aware of the phenomenon.

Now, while we question the authenticity of a “best of 2014” or “worst of 2014” list, because year end opinions are like assholes- we only listen to the first half of similes. However, one type of list that has come into increasing popularity in the internet age does have some merit. Year end lists that tell you “the most searched items of the year” are great for lazy writers, but they also manage to express something tangible about the previous year.

These aren’t the random musings of some asshole bloggers (hi there, glad you made it to our site, by the way), they are hard facts, data points that let us know what everyone in the nation is thinking about. When you see a “the ten most searched celebrity names” you invariably say to yourself, “Yes, we get it, Kim Kardashian broke the internet, we honestly don’t give a shit” while also admitting that it helps inform what’s most popular over a given period of time. There has to be some scientific value in that.

So when we saw the list of the most searched beers in America, we had a moment where we lost our composure. Now granted, the only searching for a beer that we do is blindly fumbling in our fridge for something that’s cold so we can make the shakes go away, and the only Google we use for that is the name of the hook we have to replace our left hand after the doctors took it on account of the diabetes. But it was disheartening to see how…well, bad the vast majority of these beers were.

America. We need to talk. Let’s go over this list, and have a frank discussion about where you disappointed us.

America’s Most Searched Beers of 2014 (A Guide On Doing Better Next Time, Goddamn It)

Budweiser is the number one selling beer in America. Let that sink in, America, and think long and hard about what you did. Do you do this just to make us upset? Do you? The reason doesn’t matter, all that we know is that Americans spend more of their money buying beer produced by a Belgian-Brazilian conglomerate than on beer that tastes like anything other than sadness. We’re not joking, we’re pretty confident abject sorrow is the active ingredient in Budweiser, and we got confirmation of this fact once we saw this Yahoo Answers post which is easily the most depressing thing we’ve ever read about beer.

While Budweiser is not exactly known for pushing the envelope past their “straw flavored spit water” standard, they do branch out on occasion and try to introduce new beers to an always-hungry-for-innovation market. The most popular of these efforts tend to range from “Bad but people seem to like it” to “this beer is not actively awful.” Even though they set a pretty low bar with all their products, they have managed to, time and time again, create terrifying concoctions. Beverages that haunt all who drink them for the remainder of their days.

“Sure it tastes like garbage, but it looks like a bow-tie so suddenly I want to drink it!”

~Americans according to Budweiser

You see that up there? That’s the latest attempt by Budweiser to dangle shiny things in front of American beer drinkers in order to trick them into buying their watered down, rice-brewed beer. The marketing strategy is simple—hey, people will buy any beer if the can looks all funny. It’s a bow-tie guys! The beer inside must taste like something other than wet cardboard and dirty barroom floors.

While there are craft beers that veer towards the “pointlessly novel” in order to entice novice drinkers (looking at you, Clown Shoes Brewery), they usually have a quality product they’re trying to introduce to the masses. The largest domestic beer brewers, however, can’t make such claims. They know they’re selling you cheap swill (that admittedly will get you drunk…eventually) but dammit, if the bottle is cool enough, maybe they can trick you to think otherwise. That’s where we get…

Beer is a lot like sex. When it’s good, it’s really good. And when it’s bad, you’re probably going to wake up the next day feeling empty, unsatisfied, and with an inexplicable headache. But no matter how good or bad it is, America just keeps coming back for more. And if this metaphor were to really hold its own weight, we’d have to hope that Americans in general prefer good beer, then. Because who wants bad beer? Date rapists? The French? Spuds McKenzie?

Nope, turns out fucking everyone prefers drinking shitty beer. How else can you explain this blog post that lists the 10 top selling beers in America? These beers are collectively so bad and un-American that we almost didn’t spot the egregious omission of Samuel Adams from the list. We’re not saying Sam Adams is the best beer in America, far from it, but if you have an ambitious brewery that’s named after Sam fucking Adams, and it’s not in the top 10 of market share, someone fucked up (we’re looking at you, majority of beer drinkers).

Of course, when we at AFFotD feel the need to correct such misconceptions about the America’s fine assortment of fermented malts and hops, we do so with the calm, delicate prose that sets aside emotional responses, and instead delves into the topic with tact and understanding. That’s why we present you…

“America loves beer!” is something our writers shout every day, often while confronting concerned family members reading letters at the urgings of a strangely persistent psychologist. “America needs beer!” they often add afterwards as their mother starts slowly sobbing into a handkerchief. “Don’t judge me okay, goddamn it, I’m not the reason dad left!” they inevitably end up saying, but that’s a personal matter we’d rather not get into.

Yes, beer saves us from overrated things like “sobriety” or “the crippling weight of reality” and America needs none of those things. That’s why the average American drinks almost 21 gallons of beer each year. That means America as a whole consumes more beer in a year than they do milk. And milk doesn’t exactly have an age limit tacked onto it.

The truth of the matter is, despite how much Americans love their beer (which ranks just above “puppies” and just below “nothing”) we have to allow ourselves to realize that we live in a global society, and other countries brew and even drink their own beer too. Even North Korea has beer. Granted it’s just basically fermented gravel with some stray barleys thrown in there, and the bitterness of the hops is replaced by a generally uncomfortably forced Nationalism, but the point still stands- we’re not alone in this beer drinking world.

“Eh, still better than Natty Lite.”

But while the whole world may agree on the deliciousness of beer, there are still some points of contention. And that is why we at America Fun Fact of the Day are going to be the first combatants in the great World War of Beer, because it’s time to set things straight. When we hear article after article discussion European beers lowering their alcohol content, we know it’s time to stand up for the rights of Americans and high-gravity beer drinkers everywhere.

That’s right, folks. Fill up your five gallon kettles with some water, steep some hatred in there, bring it to a boil, and add that hoppy bitterness because we are here to declare…

WORLD WAR BEER: America’s Response To The Watering-Down of English Beers